Topic: Objections to the non-aggression principle (Read 5906 times)

That's only true in a state with a proper legal system.  Outside of a state structure, people like Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun found the best way to maximise their stuff.

I'm not disagreeing that the NAP is morally nicer but history tells us that if there is no restriction, its the real bastards who do well and its the decent people who end up as peons.

I think a very important point to understand about the human condition is that we are animals seeking to maximize our stuff. Generally, the best way to maximize your own stuff is by interacting with other people in a voluntary manner. However, situations occur where the best way to maximize your stuff is by cheating others out of their stuff. The NAP describes a way for people to interact so that risk is contained, competition is encouraged (failure is common), and barriers to entry are low.

The introduction of an all-powerful entity into an ecosystem does nothing to keep risk contained, encourage competition, or keep barriers to entry low. All it does is attract powerful players looking to bend this all-powerful entity to their own will (like when regulation is passed which benefits the established businesses over future start-ups).

Bailing out gigantic institutions which can kill our economy demonstrates a lack of redundancy, an abundance of offloaded risk, and a lack of competition.

Systems in nature have certain characteristics in common: redundancy, mutation, and selection for good reason...they're sustainable, yo.

And yes, I am saying that our current system is not sustainable. I can see how it would be much harder to entertain the idea of the NAP if you believe this system can continue. The dollar is a ponzi scheme and will collapse into rubble, dust, and other stuff.

Its nice to debate theories but you can't invent you own facts.  Societies that have phenomenally low violence rates, constitutions that are ancient and that are well established democracies are peaceful and stable.

Is there really a difference, save for scale and different names, between government of a country and government of a private property? In both cases, anyone who uses your land does so under your rules, and it is in your benefit to remove disturbers of the peace for the sake of other tenants, to avoid good tenant flight (although good is entirely subjective, of course).

Either taxes or rent pay for the maintenance of the property, tenant services, and your time in governing (managing).

Government owned the country before you were born. The landlord bought the house before you did. Both defend them, usually to someone's death. It also helps that human's need land to survive for very long, making ownership the win on many counts.

If you get enough people to support your cause, and you can overwhelm defenses of either state; you can take over either the government or a private property.

It sounds to me many libertarians misunderstand this difference in scale. Smaller doses of private owners watching their own fences will still have government of that property, as they will have their own rules, and what you're really asking for is to be in charge of the country...but have a billion little countries. Wouldn't it be lovely paying a billion different tariffs when you want to ship something from NY to LA.

How many libertarians are against the idea of ownership?

The whole point is that current societies are neither peaceful nor stable. The law is in constant flux, riddled with special cases and loopholes, and driven by political expediency and the whims of special-interest groups. Aggression of all forms--theft, fraud, assault, wrongful imprisonment, even murder--is not only widespread, but systemic.

Government is force. That is its defining characteristic. If it did not practice aggression it would not be a government. There is no such thing as a peaceful society which endorses the use of force against non-aggressors. It may prove impossible in practice to have a peaceful society in the absence of government, but one thing is for sure: you will never have a peaceful society with government.

There you have the core fault in the stateless society argument.  Once you come to deal with people who are willing to die for their beliefs, you need a state to protect you.  Since you know these people are out there, the best thing is to work for a state that respects the rights of people of all kinds.

So what's your point, exactly? Any time you get 3 or more people together, you get a power structure. To get rid of government, you'd have to ban nearly all social interactions.

If the government had a monopoly on force, it would be impossible for anyone to commit illegal violence. So by your definition, we already live in an anarchy.

I contend that government is built on the need for monopolized services. The source of its seemingly disproportionate power is the fact that there are people who are willing to publicly risk their lives to enforce its polocies. People like that can easily whoop anything you can establish with just property rights and contracts.

What an odd question!  Here we are in a peaceful stable set of societies and you are asking how we can build a stable society.  No need - its been done and we like it.  The idea of forums like this is that you offer an improvement.

Exactly.


If a man is enslaved, should I offer up an alternative before I condemn slavery? The fundamental building block of any government is a monopoly of force, how can you build anything stable from that?

@Fizzgig: Just because you cannot personally think of how something might be done, doesn't make it impossible. Any con man knows how to manipulate social power structures.

If there was no state, you will have armed militias financed by foreign states. One of them will control the area you live in and you will either comply with it or be killed by it. 

If there was no state, you think one would just 'slip' in? I think I'd notice if a government slipped in and started taking my money. But it's okay as long as they buy something with it and let me use it right?

I don't have near enough time to respond to everything that's being said, so I probably won't be posting anymore. But I couldn't resist this:

Sure, if all the cotton was produced by slaves, we could find a way to get by without cotton. Just like if we abolished copyright, we would find a way to survive without lame-ass movies coming out every week. It would be tough, but at least the strongest among us would survive.

HOWEVER, if we abolished the state, a new one would simply take its place. This is because every society has structure, and some people are creative enough to use that structure to seize power.

If we try to make a concious decision about what form that new state will take, we will either make the world a better place, or we will learn from our mistakes (hopefully both). Either way, it's a net plus.

If we merely abolish the state and then go about our business, some people would seize power and we'd be oppressed all over again. We'd break even, at best.

Its important not to get into magical thinking here.  Whether its "the market" or "the fairies" its silly to say that stuff you want will just happen and that bad stuff is the fault of "the state" or "the trolls."

For example, the market doesn't meet your demand for health care and it never can.  So you have no reason to say a market in goons is a good replacement for a police force.

By infinite diversity, I mean that each person's needs and wants are unique. For the sake of evolution, that's a good thing. It's also possible that a person's needs are so unique that others cannot understand them. This is why I'm skeptical of any generalizations that libertarians make about the way people behave.

Not so. We do have private arbitration. And people are free to criticize court rulings with reasoning that could influence future rulings. Government services do not imply monopoly.

Even if this is true, each tribe would develop under its own unique circumstances, requiring different customs for survival. There are also customs where no single practice is clearly better than another.

Of course it would be justified to steal. I wouldn't expect anyone to sacrifice their life only to uphold property rights.

Citation needed. If you're refering to the rich/poor gap, that can easily be explained by the vast majority of power being consolidated in corporations. Yes, that is a use of force, so you might be partially right.

Well, I'm all in favor of exposing stuff, but there will always be people that are more powerful than others (making government an inherent feature of society), and they will make mistakes, so I'm certain that some violence will always be necesary.

Your fatal assumption is that you assume justice is an objective thing. It's not, it's subjective; what I consider to be just you may not. Orange juice and jet engines are the same way... what I consider to be good OJ, you may not. Thankfully, there is not a single monopoly supplier of orange juice or jet engines, so competition allows the satisfaction of diverse demands for those products. Unfortunately, in every geographical region, there is a single monopoly supplier of justice. In the United States, that means justice looks like this.

Your analogies are laughable. The very definition of justice pertains to fairness, equity and the upholding of law. Please show where orange juice and jet engines are products in which individuals expect the same from.

The market supplies for our demands of juice, jump ropes and jet engines. What makes you think that the market won't supply for our demands of justice? Serious analysis please, not "ZOMG roving gangs". That's just FUD.

Any conversation where someone is using words out of their agreed meaning is pointless. 

For 1000s of years, people have wanted to have a society where they feel safe.  We currently have that in a great many countries.  A single state monopoly on violence and people being able to vote on how that power is exercised have proved to be good things. 

You keep saying there is an alternative.  Do you not have a way to articulate it?

For thousands of years, the world has been run by states under the assumption that a few given power at the top of the pyramid can provide outcomes that benefit all the rest. That brings us to today, where you state that the world is far from perfect. How much more power must be given to the few in order to generate a more perfect outcome? Is it not possible that the underlying assumption, that order can be created from the top down, is invalid?

Anyway, as you said this discussion is pointless, so I shall not expend any further effort replying.